The meniscus is a piece of fibrous cartilage found in the knee. Its injury can be mainly due to a traumatic or degenerative cause.
The menisci are two C-shaped fibrocartilage structures (external and internal) whose function is to adapt the rounded shape of the femur to the flat shape of the tibia. They have, therefore, the function of shock absorber and stabilizer of the knee. In addition, in a transverse cut, 2 zones must be distinguished: the red zone (it is the peripheral zone of the meniscus to which blood reaches and has, therefore, capacity to heal) and the white zone (it is the internal zone, without blood and without capacity to heal).
The meniscus can be injured either by traumatic cause (it is typical of athletes or workers who require physical effort) or by degenerative cause (typical of older people who already have an older meniscus and are injured by a bad gesture). Once the meniscus tear has been diagnosed (usually after exploring the patient and performing a nuclear magnetic resonance) it is necessary to decide what to do.
Treatment of a meniscus injury
First of all, not all meniscal tears are operated on. At our Center we always ask the patient the same question: do you have any discomfort that prevents you from leading a normal life? If the answer is yes, then we decide to perform an arthroscopy and, if not, we prescribe treatment by means of relative rest, analgesics and physiotherapy. Once we have decided to perform the arthroscopy, we opt to perform a meniscectomy (removing only the damaged part), but only if the tear is in the white zone, the patient is over 40 years of age and the shape of the tear makes it impossible to suture it.
Otherwise, whenever we perform a knee arthroscopy, we always attempt meniscal suturing (especially in tears in the red zone and in young patients). Meniscectomy leads to a faster recovery of the patient, although it results in the possible appearance of early osteoarthritis because a piece of meniscus is missing, whereas meniscal suture has a slower recovery (the meniscus must be given time to heal), but the possible appearance of osteoarthritis is avoided because the entire meniscus is preserved.